Guild Wars 2

I’m sorry, I’m pretty clueless here – I tried to search on Google and it seems tenfold of people had the same problem and all were left open cases (except some were fixed with repair or such).

Just while waiting for someone who might know what’s going on, could you please post your system specs here?

And at what point does the crash occur exactly? At launcher, at char selection or loading into the game? Or do you get to play for a few minutes?

Have you tried anything yourself? Even the usual trying again and rebooting your computer? Just making sure whether you came here straight after this happened or not.

A lot can go wrong in 30 mins, but most likely it’s a temporary bug with their server, your network or something else. You could try deleting local.dat file and using repair function if it doesn’t go away automatically. See if that helps

If there really isn’t any dust there, the options are few. However something must be causing it. The things I can think of off the rop of my head are:
-Something else blocking the airflow and trapping the hot air inside. Check what Makke suggests and also run Core Temp or Real Temp, if this is the case, your CPU is probably hotter than normal as well.
-Some settings have gone wrong, and there’s maybe too many volts running thru your GPU. Try Resetting your BIOS to factory settings (and update it if possible) and see if it has any effect.
-The heat spreader (or its attachments) are having issues. Without some advanced tweaking there’s not much to go around with this one I suppose…

There you go, problem was the heat. At least I wouldn’t settle for that, though, computers aren’t designed to have need to be underclocked as time goes by (jesus, what a sentence). You could contact your laptop OEM about this issue and see what their response is. If you have to fiddle with it alone the only option is pretty much what Makke said. 80c for underclocked is still pretty kitten high. You could just take a screw driver and open the small plates and blow some of the dust out. Just be careful of not spitting on the components.

No, of course not all of the cores. If that was the case, i7’s would be vastly superior to i5’s and AMD’s would be back in game in GW2. What I meant was that program tells a CPU (and nowadays the core architecture kinda means there are many CPU’s in one physical chip) to calculate something, and it tells it to do it now and fast and not when it feels like it unless you tell it to do that, of course, when it would lower the usage.

I currently have Q6600 at 2.9 GHz, X9650 is on paper about 15-20% faster than my OC’d chip. when there’s a zerg, not even too huge, but well over what’s causing orange swords on map I rarely get over 10 fps, maybe 14 with absolutely lowest gfx settings. That’d mean only around 8-13 fps with decent gfx settings. You could test that out yourself if you have the money and tie to buy and resell, but I promise you, the result won’t be spectacular.

I believe it’s an issue with GPU overheating as I’ve heard that causes cyclical fps drop. I’m not too familiar with laptop GPU’s so you’re going to have someone else answer for that or ask elsewhere, but there might be dust in the system that’s causing it. If the warranty is still on you could take it to the shop where you bought it and say that it’s overheating.

As said, more hardware usage, more fps. If you think you have more fps than needed you could cap it and have your components running at lower usage. But basically, the program will ask for your computer to do the calculations as fast as possible and therefore the usage is as high as the program demands. That being said, having high CPU usage is not dangerous, if it’s not running very hot or too many volts.

There actually isn’t any graphics card, just integrated graphics unit in the CPU. That is of course one of the reason you have to play on lowest settings but that should give you that tearing. Try updating your video drivers to see if it helps.

Download GPU-Z, run your game in windowed fullscreen and every now and then watch your Sensors tab. How is the GPU load, heat and other stuff? maybe even post a screenshot. Also go to nvidia’s site and download the latest drivers for GT540M. See if that helps.

I agree that it’s better to first meddle with software than hardware, especially if you don’t have much experience with what’s inside the case. Now it looks like he’s tried different drivers, launching CPU-Z before and after the game amongst other things, so the easiest way now is to detach the GPU physically.

Also about sound affection, I can tell you this much: I have a very weak laptop and when I play YouTube videos at 1080p both image and sound stutters. When I turn it down to 720p or lower, everything’s fine again for both of them.

Wow, guys. Seriously.

I thought we’re here to help other players to solve their gaming issues. We all have our share of technical knowledge, no denying that and no reason to bash one another even if you have a better solution for a problem. Like I said, we’re here to solve things, not to compete who is the best helper.

Back at OP, have you tried any of the suggestions yet, has anything worked out so far?

10 fps MAX in big zergs? No, that’s not normal. It’s normal to have low fps but I’d say that’s lower than usual for that CPU. Try turning AA off, postprocessing off and lower you character model limit/quality and see if it makes a difference.

When you’re zerging, what does Windows Task Manager say about CPU core usage?

Did you launch CPU-Z after or before launching GW2? There’s been problems with CPU-Z reporting x1 and staying there if it’s launched first. If it still stays at x1 you could just open up your case, pull the card out for a second or two and put it back to it’s place.

Well first off, that graphics card is way outdated. Have you tried turning the graphic options to absolute minimum, including resolution? Horrible looking, I know, but just for testing.

Also, download CPU-Z and after you’ve launched the game open it, check mainboard tab and link width. If it’s x16, then alles klar. if it’s x1 the problem is even more severe.

EDIT: the trick can be done using GPU-Z too

Please post the rest of your system as well: CPU, motherboard, hard drive, RAM, OS etc.

Yeah, that was how it went with my CPU, I was looking at the cheapest Haswell i5, then I saw the second one was only few euros more, the one after that also, and the K version happened to be for sale… And I was sold

Yeah I’m leaning towards into thinking that if you can’t get acceptable framerate even with Intel, why pay more to be still unhappy? If they change their code to utilize more cores or use CPU less completely I believe AMD will be just as much back in game as Intel.

Hehe I see, that’s the problem with the internet, you never know who you’re talking to

Well I kind of gave you the answer but I forgot to put a conclusion on it (I’m a math student, I tend to get a little theoretical at times) So if an Overclocked i5 can get 20-25 fps, I’m guessing a non-overclocked AMD will get maybe 10-15 fps. Graphic settings don’t matter that much since they’re mostly for GPU. keep AA, reflections, shadows and postprocessing low as well as character model quality and limit and I believe you’re good to go.

Yes, too much of processing power is never a bad thing (excluding power consumption maybe) so if you can afford, go for a higher video card. The problem just is that price increases more than the performance after that point. a GTX 780 Ti is, what 600 dollars, but it sure ain’t 6 times more powerful than HD 7790

What I would do is download programs called CPU-Z and GPU-Z.
Run your game in windowed fullscreen and then open up those along with Task Manager (make sure your game is running first).
Open Sensors tab in GPU-Z and Performance tab in Task Manager.
Now play around a little while, for example in Lion’s Arch and when you get fps drop alt tab into these programs.
In CPU-Z verify that your Core Speed is 3700 MHz (or very close), in Mainboard tab verify that your link width is x16.
In GPU-Z check your GPU usage. Right click and change it to maximum and look if it’s been near 100%.
In Task Manager check your CPU and RAM usage (and the graph) look if they’ve been near 100% at any point (Any core, not the total usage for CPU).

Once you’ve done that, report back here with the results you got and then we’re better off making some kind of diagnosis

EDIT: when you’re checking the core speed remember that it might vary, jumping in a few hundred MHz span. Don’t be afraid if that happens, just check if it reaches the maximum of 3700 MHz (AKA 3.7 GHz (unless you have overcloked your CPU, then it should show more))

Running around where? If it’s Lion’s Arch or other crowded place then that’s completely normal fps. If its out in the open world then we might have a problem

OP, there are a few things you should understand:

Intels DO beat AMDs in single core performance by a hefty margin. The new i5 4670K is ~57% faster per core than both 6300 and 8320 based on PassMarks performance test.

Also CPU usage is exponential in relation to the amount of players on screen. Going from 1 to 10 to 20 players is not the same amount of torque needed, it’s maybe twice or even more. As you can see it adds up pretty quickly.

That being said having that huge amount of players on screen is pretty “rare” instance, at least pretty exclusive. That would be WvW and second to it some boss events in crowded hours. If you prefer dungeons and sPvP and something else you might be able to get away with AMD.

Lastly, your current GPU isn’t gonna cut it no matter what CPU you can see my specs in my sig and it currently does ok, including WvW smaller fights. Upgrade that first to whatever sirsquishy suggested and I guarantee you’ll see more benefit than from CPU upgrade.

Do you mean the refresh rate (hertz)?

When you launch the updater, what happens? How far do you get with everything being normal and what are the symptoms after?

you could first try repairing the game. in the extreme case you could reinstall the whole thing and then it should work at least.

sirsquishy.8531:

With out qouting, No we cannot trust them to not say anything.

Intel wants to be 3-4 gens ahead of AMD for performance. They will do anything necessary to get that done, Including Jumping into a new Platform and forcing everyone to rebuild.

Exactly. And to get people to jump, I doubt they will not say you can’t program it (or that it’s highly discouraged).

Getting relatively OT here now, but seems to be the spirit of this forum

Thanks for your trust :P

Sweet! Happy gaming then!

sirsquishy.8531:

locx.6412:

It’s going to depend, if he really wants more power now, 3570K is not a bad choice. a year old CPU (that wasn’t newly released to begin with) won’t probably lose so much of it’s value and it could be resold when it’s time to upgrade to whatever is available at the time

I will say this much. 2nd and 3rd Gen i5’s, that can be unlocked, hold potential to last another 2-3 years before they are outclassed by even AMD.

Given the current price market of the 2k,3k, and 4k CPUs. As long as they are priced with in reason (5-8% between Generation) then buy the current best.

True, even more so for other games that utilize the CPU a bit better.

I just suggested 3570K because he has IB-motherboard already. IF it’s H77 tho, then all I said was garbage :P

sirsquishy.8531:

So while currently (waiting for more public released info from intel), Haswell is a single upgrade with no roadmap for a 5th Gen, that doesnt’t mean you won’t be able to take your Haswell and put it in the next gen Chipset to cut down on the 5th and 6th gen CPU upgrades.

Until Intel says otherwise, anyway :-)

And the question is… Can we trust them to not say anything?

OK, http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/mobile?os=Windows%207%20-%2064 try to download Latest Beta Drivers. follow thru the installation process and you probably have to restart your computer. After that’s done, try to run the game again.

IF you can’t find it there, click Start button, right click “Computer” and select properties from the pop-up list. Now you’re in the same place

Oh yes, click system and mainenance, then System there and now you should be in the screen I talked about

there’s a first section called Windows Edition which says Windows 7 (or Vista or whatever yours happen to be) Home Premium (or whatever yours happen to be)

Then next section is system type. it lists Rating, Processor, Memory (RAM) and lastly System type.

So it is a laptop?

And the screen goes black and then white every time you try to play or does it just happen every once in a while? Have you tried anything yet yourself?

I fail to find you Operating system there (other than it is a Windows) Is it Win 7? 32-bit or 64-bit? You can check by going to Control Panel > System. under System it says System type.

You can try installing every update first. If Toshiba provided any update software, check that. also Control Panel > Windows Update. You can also check this site http://support.amd.com/en-us/download fill in the information (Notebook graphics, Radeon HD series, HD7***M series and your Windows version) and install graphic drivers, they might be the reason here.

If that doesn’t help, try [url=“https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/28148006-Repairing-the-Game-Client”]repairing the game[/url]. if that doesn’t work, reinstall the whole thing.

Whatever gets the info from your screen to us works pretty much everything on that page is important so just put them here somehow

The CPU, Graphics, RAM and hard drives is a good start. You can also take a screenshot and post it here.

sirsquishy.8531:

locx.6412:

If you have the money, sure, 4670k >3570k, but it’s not that much better. If you’re on a budget, I’d suggest 3570k as it’s only 5-10% slower. Upgrade both to Broadwell or the one after that when they’re out.

Not just that, but the Haswell socket 1150 is a one time upgrade. The Z87 Chipset will NOT support the 5th gen of Intel i-series CPUs(I confirmed this via Intel Directly yesterday). Its going to still be on the 1150 Socket, but on the Z9* Chipset, which will NOT support 4Th gen CPUs (what the rumor mill is saying currently, and its still in discussion internally at Intel).

They are moving some control element from the CPU back into the Chipset to reduce their nm Manufacturing Process (To reduce Die Size again).

So While the Haswell is faster then Ivy, Knowing that the Z87 Socket 1150 is a dead end now, I wouldn’t recommend buying into it at the full price. If you cannot get the Haswell setup for less then 8% above Ivy I would just stick with Ivy.

If at all possible, Wait for the Z9* 1150 Motherboards and CPUs to come out, as that’s probably going to run up through 7th Gen CPUs (unless they change the CPU’s Internal Architecture again).

So it is confirmed then. I knew about the series 9 chipsets and the rumors were wild around it.

It’s going to depend, if he really wants more power now, 3570K is not a bad choice. a year old CPU (that wasn’t newly released to begin with) won’t probably lose so much of it’s value and it could be resold when it’s time to upgrade to whatever is available at the time

If you have the money, sure, 4670k >3570k, but it’s not that much better. If you’re on a budget, I’d suggest 3570k as it’s only 5-10% slower. Upgrade both to Broadwell or the one after that when they’re out.

MakkeOnMies.4718:

locx.6412:

Have you tried monitoring your CPU and GPU usage while playing to verify which one actually is guilty? On paper your GPU is overkill but lately I’ve seen quite a few people with overkill GPUs magically having it running 1x lane instead of 16x even tho it’s in the correct slot. If that’s fine and CPU usage is high then yes, a better processor would do you good. If neither seems to be capping out then we have to figure something else out.

Check the screen shot below, thats whats happening with High end GPUs, its because of power saving, not because they actually run on 1×. Cpu-z is just acting stupid.

http://m.imgur.com/CQk0h5D

I know about that, sometimes it just doesn’t go back to 16x even on demand. Don’t knnow what’s causing it, sometimes drivers issue, sometimes reseating the card solves it, but all I know is people have got better framerate after addressing and solving this issue

Have you tried monitoring your CPU and GPU usage while playing to verify which one actually is guilty? On paper your GPU is overkill but lately I’ve seen quite a few people with overkill GPUs magically having it running 1x lane instead of 16x even tho it’s in the correct slot. If that’s fine and CPU usage is high then yes, a better processor would do you good. If neither seems to be capping out then we have to figure something else out.

Good luck, remember to read haswell oc guide as well. You might wanna keep one open on a phone or laptop if you can so you don’t have to memorize everything. Linustechtips has a pretty good one, also there was some quite long and thorough video in 4 parts on youtube. Their bios might look different but just find your equivalent. Post here again if you have any issues or doubts or you just wanna report your results!

Btw, set your voltage mode to manual from adaptive when you’re overclocking. It wont affect much when gaming but when you run a stress test the motherboard will demand and get more voltage than you set it to. Set it back when you’re done.

One thing that baffles me is that CPU-Z shows 4.2 GHz. Was it even at some point 4.4 GHz?

Also, remember that going from 3,4 GHz to 4,4 is ~30% increase. At framerates of 20’s it means 6 fps increase. If it didn’t increase at all, then something might be off.

If you get BSOD, don’t be afraid, it’s all part of the game. It just shuts down the computer to prevent anything. Most likely you had too little voltage, so try increasing it a bit and up you go. Also I’m not sure how accurate ASRock temp monitor is, so you might want to download Core Temp or Real Temp and see if they are similiar and that your CPU doesn’t overheat.

Well are you ready to invest anything to make your computer faster?

What is the situation with your hard drive? how full is it, has it been fragmented lately, do you suspect there are viruses on it? Loading times are usually affected by it’s performance. Faster and well-taken care of drive, shorter loading times. Now if you are ready it put any money on it, an SSD is the solution. Typically 5-10 times faster than an HDD, more durable etc. but more expensive too, of course. a 120 GB one should be enough, install your Windows and GW2 on it, keep the rest on your HDD and loading times are just a few seconds. Cost of one is about ~$80 depending on where you’re living.

That being said, are you really able to run the game with Sempron 145? Not trying to be mean, but by looking at the benchmarks, around 5 times faster processor is just about enough for this game, and those are quad cores too. an SSD paired with that would be quite a contrast but you could always keep it if you deicded to upgrade the rest as well.

They say that you shouldn’t OC with any software, or at least it wont yield as good result as doing manually. I’m not a pro overclocker so I can’t really get into details there, but I’d say those programs can’t be total garbage since there’s been professional engineers and programmers behind them. what you could do is use it as a guideline to check where your CPU can go. At least ASUS boards have this software that monitors everything and auto-overclocks as well while watching the temps and voltages etc. and it takes the frequency as high as it will go until it BSOD’s.

You could check that to see your limits and stay below that. It probably requires some skill and advanced tweaking to get above. If you stay, say, 300 MHz below the result and you’re already getting worryingly high temps at idle, just lower both frequency and voltage down.

Overclocking manually isn’t actually hard or very time-consuming; it’s the small tweaking and optimizing that comes after. Bump a few hundred MHz’s up and add a little to voltage. It boots up? Great. Temperatures are ok? Fantastic. Wash, rinse and repeat. You don’t have to stay for the fine tuning at every step, you’re not gonna use them after you’ve found you’re sweet spot after all. Having higher voltage than required isn’t necessarily harmful to your CPU, it’s just unoptimal. Unless it’s crazy high, of course.

EDIT: It could be that you’re done with overclocking very quickly also. It could be that your CPU doesn’t overclock very well at all. For example, my current Q6600 stays at stock 2.4 GHz at 1.08V and 2.9 GHz requires 1.225V (not bad, older CPUs required more voltage). However, with normal means it refuses to go any higher. I even tried as high as 1.475V @ 3 GHz and it hardly booted up. Temps are not the issue either since it stays under 55C while stress testing. If you hit this kind of wall somewhere around 4-4.2 GHZ maybe, well, tough luck but at least you don’t need to spend too much time on it.

That’s all perfectly normal. this game is very CPU intensive and on top of that it only utilizes 3 threads effectively. Your CPU is a quad core, which means 3/4 cores are heavily used, hence 75% use. Your friend might have an FX-8350 or other kind of 8-core and therefore never see that big usage.

There’s really nothing you can, or should, do about it. 20-30 fps is very reasonable in LA. If you wanted to have a lower CPU usage you would have lower framerate as well.

There are tons of great guides around, just type Haswell overclocking or 4670k overclocking to google and youtube and follow them. I’m on my phone now so I can’t give links, but the basic idea pretty much is to increase that clock speed and voltage, it’s all done in BIOS just using your keyboard.

Now before you go, you want to check your temps with RealTemp or CoreTemp while running a stress test, and see what your distance to TJMax is. That’s how much warmer your CPU can get before it throttles or shuts itself down. Mind you, you won’t get very far with the stock cooler. Also rememver, OCing is a slow process, take baby steps, better to be safe than sorry. When done right, there’s nothing dangerous about it and it’s right now the only way to get better performance with a 4670k. Good luck!

That is a system that has about the best potential for GW2, I give you that.

GW2 doesn’t require much for a graphics card, so I don’t think there’s any issues with that and thus nothing needed to be done to it. What you can do is next time you play, go into the main town (I assume it’s Lion’s Arch you’re talking about) and have Windows Task Manager or some similar kind of program running in background to monitor CPU Usage . GW2 doesn’t utilize more than 3 threads effectively and once 1 core hits 100 usage, the performance starts to drop. So, when you’re seeing low performance, alt tab into whatever program it is you’re using, and I bet it shows you’ve just been to if not max then very near it.

You can monitor you your GPU usage as well just for the lulz with GPU-Z for example and see that it doesn’t go anywhere near max while playing GW2 (unless you’re running higher than 1080p resolution and/or eyefinity). I have a GTX 660 and it hardly ever even peaks at 99% usage.

There currently isn’t a CPU on the market that’s powerful enough to provide constant 60+ fps in crowded areas, not even 30+ for that matter. The only thing you can do, however, is to overclock that beast and unleash its fullest potential.

here’s a section from GW2 Rules of Conduct:

9. You may not buy, sell, transfer or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell, transfer or auction) , or offer to transfer, sell or auction, or buy or accept any offer to transfer, sell or auction, any game Account or game Content, including (without limitation) game characters, character attributes, items, objects, currency, credits or copyrighted material, or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by ArenaNet, Inc., NCsoft, the Service, or our licensors, nor may you encourage or induce any other player to participate in such prohibited transaction(s), except as may be specifically authorized by the Service and by ArenaNet or NCsoft, without first obtaining our express written permission.

So that basically means no, unless that other game is authorized by ArenaNet (which is would doubt in almost every case) and ANet gives you a written permission. I wouldn’t get my hopes high.

Regarding latency, what is your internet speed now and what type of connection is it? Wifi or cable to router and cable or 3G to provider? Having cable all the way is as far as I know the only thing you can do to make it any better, the rest is up to what your ISP provides you.

Well I don’t doubt that at all. I used to have 4850 before I bought this 1,5 years ago and boy was that a nice jump!

Oh it’s just moving the cursor? Now that’s pretty weird. And it seriously drops your fps from 60 to 10?

If this is not an issue in any other game, then it could be an issue in the gw2 file. First try repairing it (https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/28148006-Repairing-the-Game-Client) if it doesn’t help, try reinstalling the whole game. If anything, it at least doesn’t cost anything.

I have the same CPU ( @ 2.9 GHz) and GTX 660 which is pretty close to that R9 270. I can ram up my GPU bound graphic settings almost to the max (at some places even supersampling) and it only peaks at 99% GPU usage. I try WvW and it’s pretty good, until big zerg fights, then I’m getting 10 fps, give or take.

Since you can achieve 3.6 GHz (quite impressive!) and R9 270 is maybe 4 times more powerful than that HD 4870, I’d say upgrade the GPU first. It’ll give you the opprtunity to have a nice looking game everywhere and only fall behind in crowded places vs. the game looking like Super Mario on NES and still not getting too great of an fps in crowded place (FX-6300 is not going to cut it in this game tbh)

I’m not trying to be mean because everyone can’t afford or are just not willing to spend their money on the best stuff available, but how old is this computer? Looking at the benchmarks the video cards that are just about enough run this game with medium/high settings @ 1080p are about 4 times more powerful than HD 5570.
What are your graphics set at and what resolution do you play on?

Naturally turning the screen demands more on the system than looking at one point, you have to render new objects constantly on the screen vs just some tiny changes in the enviroment. Fps drop from 60 to 10 while doing this made me suspect that the GPU is the culprit here. Where are you getting that 60 fps? Everywhere in the open world I’m guessing, but also in cities, like Lion’s Arch or the city you started at?

Your CPU is also on the lower end but fear not, so is mine. While yours is a dual core, it has Hyper-Threading which makes it something closer to a quad core, mine is a quad and it’s weaker at stock clocks. You will run into trouble when (or if) you try to do some World vs World with this CPU, but there’s luckily plenty to do outside that as well.

What you can do is try lowering the graphic settings, namely rendering, shanders, textures, enviroment and of course your resolution if there’s room to go lower. It will look like garbage but if it helps, you know that’s the cause and you’re lucky: changing a GPU is one of the easiest parts and the socket is universal, meaning you don’t have to upgrade any other part along with it and once you decide to do a whole system upgrade, that card will work perfectly there. Plus you’re looking at only around $100 investment to have more than capable card again!

I hope this helps, please respond back here when you’ve done those little tweaks.